In the world of basketball a case of the flu can sometimes be deadly. 

An outbreak of the flu on Saturday night played a major part in allowing East Tennessee State to break out of a six-game losing streak against Appalachian with an 83-60 win in Johnson City. 

The Mountaineers were without freshman starter Shawn Alexander, who was sidelined with the flu. Marshall Phillips, the Mountaineers’ leading scorer and rebounder, was also slowed with the virus and scored just seven points. 

“Marshall hasn’t felt well, he hadn’t practiced since Wednesday, but that’s not an excuse,’’ ASU coach Buzz Peterson said. “Somebody behind those guys should be excited and pick us up.” 

“I guess my bad feeling rubbed off on everybody else,”  Phillips said about the loss after the game. 

“Even if Marshall was full speed and they didn’t have Reggie Todd back, I still don’t think we would haven beaten them. They played very well,”  Peterson  added. 

Todd, a Seventh Day Adventist who doesn’t play in games between sundown Friday and sundown Saturday because of his religious beliefs, was able to play against the Mountaineers  for the first time in two years. He had 16 points and eight rebounds, second only to Greg Stephens’ 18 points and 10 rebounds. 

“It seems like we weren’t really ready to play and we weren’t really focused,” said Tyson Patterson who finished with 10 points and four assists. “We’ve got to learn how to be focussed on the road.” 

“We played good basketball from start to finish and believed we could win. And, in fairness to Appalachian, we caught them at a good time,” ETSU coach Ed DeChellis said. 

“I feel like we were really down tonight,’’ said Peterson “No aggressiveness. No intensity. And I give credit to East Tennessee for doing a lot of that to us. They executed on offense, played good defense and were just much more aggressive than us.’’ 

A motivating factor for the Buccaneers was the 84-73  loss they took in Varsity Gym to ASU a week earlier. 

“Our guys felt embarrassed by that loss to them last week,’’ DeChellis said. 

Saturday’s performance was a turnaround from the week before when Appalachian out-rebounded  ETSU 41-26 in Boone. 

This time around East Tennesee owned the boards with a 42-21 advantage, allowing only eight Mountaineer rebounds in the second half. 

“We didn’t play very hard or very well and we weren’t proud of that fact,” DeChellis said of the earlier game.  “It’s no magic (the rebounding advantage). Our guys just worked hard.’’ 

Appalachian fell behind early by seven points but made a run to take a short-lived lead of two points around the ten-minute mark of the first half.  From that point on though, ETSU built and kept a 10-point lead that grew to more than 20 points mid-way through the second half. 

Along with Patterson, center Josh Grover picked up 10 points to lead the Mountaineers in scoring. 

The 23-point loss was Appalachian’s worst conference loss since the 1995-96 season where 20-point losses when commonplace. 

Patterson summed up the loss best: “This really opened our eyes and let us know it’s not going to be a cakewalk and that it’s not going to be an easy stride to a championship.”